The Riverprof has put me in a provocative mood by causing me to recall my schooldays and what a naughty boy I was. So I ask the following as a serious question whilst being aware that one or two Priests of The Woodworking Way may want to issue a blast of their trumpet against the monstrous regimen of Lataxe’s posts…
Has not the availability, quality popularity, success and versatility of bevel-up (BU) planes not made the more complicated and less versatile cap-ironed, bevel-down (BD) equivalents a redundant design?
Lataxe
Replies
BU planes have been known for quite some time, what do you suppose kept them from taking over so far?
My only BU planes are my blocks. Do you really think the BUs are superior for smoothing, jointing etc.? Why?
Master Lataxe
Ah, we meet again, in yet another thread! In my humble opinion, the sheer number of cap-ironed beasts adorning workbenches across the land will forever keep the BU plane from taking over, whatever one's opinion may be as to which is better. I have both, and when properly tuned {(which, of COURSE, all of mine are) insert small grin} you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference in quality. It's just a matter of personal preference as to which you prefer. I'm so used to those bevel down tools, not to mention the thousands of dollars I have invested in them, that I'd never quit using them.
I did just today plane some fantastic looking cherry crotch wood with switchy grain all over the place. My weapon of choice was my low angle jack with a reground secondary bevel, giving me a 60° effective angle. It came out as smooth as a mirror.
Jethro
Mister/Master Lataxe,
Having been a recent recipient of a Clark & Williams smoother sans cap iron but of the bevel down variety...guess what I will say? As well, I have a few others of the vintage variety sans cap iron. All work quite well without.
This is of course due to thick irons, well bedded. Pretty much like the current crop of bevel up planes, really. At least in comparison with the two critical items in common--the aforementioned thick irons and superb bedding.
The wood sees the edge the same. Doesn't care whether it is bevel up or down. 60 degrees is the same up or down. Now, there are differences as regards the iron [and I believe there is a kinesiological issue as well] but you didn't ask that/those question[s]...
Take care, Mike
Doesn't look like it, Lataxe. Apart from my block planes being bevel up for specific reasons I don't see any particular advantages in the bevel up design of larger bench planes. I hear they're fiddly to set left and right and have some quirks of their own. That's just what I've picked up and may have mis-read or mis-heard.
Anyway, I tend to think there's an awful lot of guff, hype and hoopla talked about woodworking in general. I have a tiny toolkit compared to many amateurs, far fewer planes, an almost unforgiveably tiny collection of chisels, a complete dearth of sharpening stones and methods available to me, and my library of woodworking books takes up perhaps 20" of shelf length. If I'm to believe all I read of many writers in all sorts of places I'm seriously short of everything I need to be a woodworker.
The fact is, I don't need many tools or books. I pretty much know what I'm doing with the collection I've got. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
Sire,
"Are cap irons defunct?".
Well I believe the bloody things were sent to try us by messrs Stanley and Comrades, when they (or their accountants morelikely) had the idea of promoting the use of thin bendy blades and then found it necessary to bolt on said cap iron hereafter referred to as chipbreaker in order to stiffen the thing up a bit. Furthermore, to function as a chipbreaker it needs to be set to within the thickness of a wispy shaving distance away from the edge-who but the terminally possessed is going to do this consistently accurately and delude himself that it matters one fig?
You see, my hands are tied: I am unable to send Brother Richard a true plane to relieve him of his philistinism: in other words the addition of one or two planes , either bevel up or down, but with thick blades (4mm plus) to his tool cabinet would soon convert him. Ofcourse , this genre of plane would have the blade well bedded, plus a reasonably tight mouth-and the blade would stay set and not budge as the cap would do its work, so he would not complain of fiddlyness in lateral setting etc. and he would have more interest in his tools, and thus be less jaded, and not given to predictable responses such as his latest...At no time would this chipbreaker thing be required.
So that is the cap iron/chipbreaker thing out of the way .
As for for bevel up being superior to bevel down- to be serious now:there are some drawbacks not found on bevel down ....and vice -versa, so could this be the subject of some more hoopla/ guff/another thread?
Well,
I am, as you know, plain ignorant about planes, not having had the 5 year apprenticeship yet. So I can only offer my experiences as an innocent abroad in the Land of Smooth.
BU advantages:
* Simpler construction (KISS indeed) and therefore cheaper to make/buy, easier to engineer well and easier to use/maintain.
* Allows a mouth adjustment method that is quick to make, as opposed to moving a frog (and maybe also removing the blade/capiron in some cases) with a BD.
* Blade swapping is very rapid as there is no fiddly disassembly/reassembly of parts.
* BU allows different angle blades to be swapped out (quickly) to provide for different planing tasks/timbers. A BD has one blade angle (or two if you buy an additional frog - expensive and fiddly to swap out). A BU can have as many angles as you can afford blades.
* Blade-locating grubscrews can keep a BU blade aligned and stable at the cutting end. (Not sure if these are possible with a BD)?
****
None of the above mean, I suppose, that a BD cuts worse then a BU. A BU is simply a more efficient design, for the above reasons.....? (Discuss).
Lataxe, who has 7 planes now, all BU.
Lataxe (the Sartorially Elegant One),
I wish to comment as follows:-
1)Simpler construction of the b/u? Yes and no. Depends on who is making what....To me it seems easier to make a bed for a b/d than a b/u- with the b/d the bed can double as a cross brace-photos will soon be to hand-not quite ready yet.However the mouth on a 50 degree bed b/d can be slightly more tricky to do-but again it depends on what equipment/factory one has. The rest of it is much of a muchness.Not forgetting that neither of them require a chip breaker/cap iron...
2)"Allows a mouth adjustment method that is quick to make". Er, the manufacture of the mouth adjuster is not too quick, but otherwise you are quite right, but wrong in believing that the same mouth adjusting method does not apply to a bevel down-photos can also follow in due course.In fact the mouth adjuster for a b/d with dovetails type works even better, because it only needs to be adjusted to alter the gap in front of the edge, as opposed to the adjuster in a b/u which needs to cater for the fact that as the blade is projected more so the gap closes, which is the opposite of what one wants.
3)There is no reason for blade swapping to be slow in either type, especially if the b/d does not have a frog or ####chimp breaker.
4)I think folk are going over board with this- the question of many blades with different angles. A lot depends upon what timbers are being worked. Having a spare blade for the b/d that is back bevelled is another option if required.
5)Blade locating screws can be fitted to either type and serve the same function-if required.
That is my sixpence worth.Philip Marcou
Now that wisdom has been extracted from the thinking-glands of them experienced WWs, perhaps things are becoming clearer. I know you will also correct the following provisional conclusions, should they be assuming a false premiss somewhere:
1) With modern thick blades and well-engineered beds et al, the cap iron (or more accurately, chip breaker) may be safely dispensed with in both BU and BD planes.
2) Improved methods for making adjustable mouths may also mean that a movable frog is no longer essential in BD planes.
3) In a BD plane with the above characteristics, variable edge angles can be achieved via back-bevels. However, these are more tricky to make & maintain than are the single variable-angle BU blades).
4) BU or BD planes may be equally easy to make, maintain and adapt (to different cutting angles) if the chipbreaker & movable frog are left out and an adjustable mouth built in.
So, it is not so much that BD planes are a lesser design than BU, more that chip-breakers and movable frogs might be superseded by better blades, beds and mouths.....?
Perhaps this is starting to get anal now. :-)
Lataxe
philip,
The use of cap irons predates the Stanley era by a good bit. I have several 19th century wooden planes that have 'em. They have nice heavy irons, and the cap irons themselves are pretty stout.
The line of reasoning for having a cap iron as I've heard it, is this: it is used to reduce (or dampen,) chatter, (or flexing,) caused not by the thin-ness of the iron, but of the edge itself.
The argument is, that a bevel-up iron is supported better by the bed, that is, nearer to its edge, than a bevel down iron, and so doesn't need a cap iron, for reducing chatter.
Perhaps the bevel down mindset is just a carryover from the times of all-wood plane bodies, when a 12 or 15 degree bed angle (required for bevel up use) was just too difficult to accomplish, and a 45-55 degree angle was more suitable for the technology being used?
Ray
Thanks for that , Ray. I thought that may be the case, but it was Stanley and Co who visited the thin iron, weak cap, dodgey bed combination upon us en masse. Not to say that it did/does not work, but it could be a whole lot better.
That reasoning to justify the cap iron seems weak to me. Even a thin blade, bevel down, ground at 30 degrees to minimise the the part that cannot be supported by the bed, should not get the chatters if there is a hefty cap whose edge is reasonably close to the end of the blade and holding it down onto a flat bed. In fact a thinner blade suffers less from "overhang".Philip Marcou
Lataxe, I just purchased (2) Lie-Nielsen hand planes,scrub and lowangle jack. Here in the colonies there's the KISS rule-keep it simple stupid- so from that perspective the lack of a cap iron, good bedding and thick blade, would be a plus. I hope to find out withsome1/4 sawn sycamore-GoodWorkings-bufun
ps, does everyone speak Shakespeare in your shop??
I think cap irons are unnecessary. I think they may sense in theory, but I'm not sure that theory translates into practice. Our curmudgeonly friend Larry Williams has written about this and in my mind has pretty well proven the point. You don't need a cap iron to make a plane cut well.
As to BU planes, I frankly can't wrap my mind around what it take to put a healthy dose of camber on a BU plane. Just radiusing the end as one would with a BD iron results in a different geometry at the wood. Since all of my surfacing planes have a pretty good amount of camber, this is a big issue for me personally. And let me be clear- one may be able to camber a BU plane blade, I just don't understand it.
Adam
Maybe some of the folks who know their metallurgy well could comment on this. I have assumed ever since I got my first Veritas BU and compared it to my great-grandfather's handed-down 'standard' that one of the reasons for the more recent spread of BU planes was improvements in metallurgy, which have only more recently (you know, more recently than 1895) allowed for the massive irons which are needed to allow, e.g., a BU jointer to function. Whereas, in the older fashion, it took multiple pieces of thinner steel (blade, cap iron, chipbreaker, etc.) to keep the blade from chattering, the newer, thicker steel planes smoothly with a single very thick piece.
I know I prefer them because (1) a BU from Veritas is the first properly tuned hand plane I ever used since I couldn't bear to file steel off the antiques from Great-grandpa, and (2) I love being able to swap blades with different cutting angles to get, effectively, multiple planes from one purchase.
Were Messrs Bailey, Stanley et al mistaken. Not.
Perhaps tippling English gentelman woodworkers asking impertinent questions about sacrosanct tool parts are defunct?
Glaucon, who is well into his redundancy...
Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
G,
You comment, "Were Messrs Bailey, Stanley et al mistaken. Not".
This is the wrong question. The right question is: is that once relevant BD technology now out-of-date, with its design space better filled by the more evolved BUs?
The BD planes may work well at swooshng the shavings but I am suggesting that, as a whole package (including cost of manufacture, ease of maintenance, versatility in use, etc) BD planes are an out of date design.
Putting aside the natual emotional attachment to fine old BD planes (or even new LV planes that one has purchased & polished) would you be deprived of any necessary tool-function if only BUs were available? If so, what about the BD is essential and not provided by the BUs?
Lataxe
would you be deprived of any necessary tool-function if only BUs were available? If so, what about the BD is essential and not provided by the BUs?
If Adam is correct that one cannot easily camber BU planes, then, there would indeed be a significant loss of function and utility, for me at least. For jack plane work, smoothing, and jointing, a camber is important to me in achieving clean and square results.
As I said, I have no large BU planes of the jack smoothing or jointing variety, so I have no direct point of reference. The forefathers seemed to think that BU was good for end grain and BD for everything else. Seems telling.
I think about the physics of the wedge as learned from chisel and drawknife work in long grain. With the BU, the edge wants to dive into the wood; with the BD, the edge is easier to control in this regard. Perhaps this is significant somehow?
Edited 1/16/2007 5:04 pm ET by Samson
Adam & Samson,
The camber question seems to need exploring. Perhaps Adam could illuminate exactly what the camber is and what it achieves.
As you know, I am not fully conversant with the detail of plane geometries and functions. I understood camber to mean either that the blade corners are rounded a bit or that the whole blade edge has a slight convex-ity, to avoid track marks....? Is there a more subtle meaning and function that I have missed?
A BU blade can certainly be given camber, as decribed above; but perhaps there is more to it? Does His Excellency The Marcou have a view?
Lataxe
A camber is more of a very slight convexity imparted to the cutting edge of a BD iron by grinding the outer portions of the bevel side of the edge a bit extra. The effect of this extra grinding and honing as one nears the corners from the middle is that the middle is the lowest point meeting the wood first (going deepest) and as one nears the respective corners the cutting edge is higher off the surface of the wood.
[WARNING - CONJECTURE - CORRECTED BY DAVID BELOW : If you did the same grind on a BU, the height of the cutting edge would not be affected. Instead the middle would simply be out in front of the corners (in the plane parallel to the surface being addressed). On the BU iron, the reference is the back and not the bevel, if you will. In order to similarly camber a BU plane, you would need to grind the long edges of the flat (nonbevel) side of the iron so that what we usually refer to as the "back of the blade" was no longer flat but instead slightly convex across its width.]
As for the benefits of a camber, I find it most useful in all my planing needs in that it makes for a very forgiving iron should the blade be nudged laterally by tough grain or the like (no tracks); it is also useful for correctly out of square edge joints (depending on which part of the mouth you put over the narrow edge being jointed), for example. I also like the almost imperceptible scalloping on a smoothed face. There's more no doubt, but those are some of the things that forst come to mind.
Edited 1/16/2007 10:23 pm ET by Samson
To produce a cambered blade with a bevel-up plane just curve the bevel, same as with a bevel-down plane. The only difference is a greater curvature of the bevel is needed to produce the same effective camber with a bevel-up plane due to the lower angle of the blade relative to the bottom of the plane. I'm defining the effective camber to be the curvature of the edge of the blade when sighting along the bottom of the plane. There is no need to do anything to the flat back of the blade.
Simple way to check. Take a blade from a bevel-down plane which is curved to produce a camber. Turn the blade over and put it back in the plane with the bevel up. It's now a bevel-up plane though one with a rather steep effective cutting angle. Look along the bottom of the plane and the edge will still be cambered.
Thanks, I was just trying to imagine the geometry problems Adam was alluding to. I guess I got it flummoxed up in my head. Experience always beats imagination in woodworking techniques!
" Experience always beats imagination in woodworking techniques!"
I'm not commenting on the veracity of this statement, but a suitable combination of the two is useful.
We need Metod The Learned to tell us more: where are you Sire?Philip Marcou
MHO, in the old days, good steel was expensive, carbon steel hard to get, so many irons, chisels etc., were made of two pieces of steel welded together; a small piece of carbon steel welded to some cheaper, softer steel. I have a chisel made this way. This made a softer overall iron, that needed reinforcement. Also in a wooden plane, you wouldn't have the support that you have with a steel plane, so you need something more subsantial, and also I have noticed that old production methods tended to overbuild, certainly by modern standards. All of this leads to more steel. Hence, the cap iron.
As to Bu replacing Bd, I think they each have certain best usages, and will both remain relevent.
Pedro
David
By increasing the camber, or as you called it, curvature of the cutting edge of a BU plane blade, aren't you narrowing the effective width of the blade considerably? In a smoothing cut, where only a few thou. are being shaved, an increased curvature would simply mean that a large portion of the edges of the blade simply won't be coming into contact with the wood. Please correct me on this, as I'm not seeing the geometry in my head.
Jeff
Jeff, Metod has the correct formula for the relationship between camber of the blade and effective camber. For a plane with a bed angle of 45 deg such as a common bench plane, the sine of 45 degrees is 0.707. So if an effective camber of 0.002 is desired then the blade needs a camber of almost .003 (.0028). For a plane with a bed angle of 12 deg, the sine of 12 degrees is 0.208, so for an effective camber of .002 the blade would need to have a camber of almost .010.
In simple terms the lower the bed angle the more the blade needs to be cambered to achieve the same effective camber.
Squire,
My view is that there is no reason for the confusion at all, even less to get in a panic over GEOMETRY.
David Cockey has explained it well. It don't matter one fig if it be befel up or befel down, not a fig. It is merely a subtle thing, one of several that add up to A Nice Planing Experience.
A diamond plate makes it easy to shape a cambered edge.Philip Marcou
I have found that with temperamental grain patterns that the irons which have a cap seem to have a lesser chance of sucking up the grain from the wood, running a line and causing a huge chip in the surface.
Hey, Lataxe!
Stumbled upon this vunder-plane that can have its iron mounted
UP or DOWN
IN THE SAME PLANE!!!
to achive blade angles from 30 to 90!
http://www.bridgecitytools.com/pages_static/vp-60.html
Only $1500 US
Has anyone here used this contraption?!
Edited 1/16/2007 9:54 pm ET by Samson
Sam, the BridgeCity VP60 has been around for some time. When it first appeared I was intrigued and tried to find out more by raising it on this forum in the hope that someone had one, or had used one. There was hardly any interest at all: check it out in the archives.
The facility of being able to run b/u or b/d in the same plane likewise is not exactly breaking news-check out the two attachments.
But I will repeat what I said previously: I can see from the video and the brochure on that VP60 that it is very well made and engineered- lots of thought has gone into it. The variable pitch idea is not new either, but I doubt if any others have mass- produced one as neat as this.I salute Mr Economakis despite what some others seem to like saying about this plane.Philip Marcou
Metod,
Thanks for the rationale of tradition. I do not know if I'm being self rational, or using a crutch, but will continue to use my home-made, bevel down smoothing plane, with cap iron and non-adjusting mouth. Maybe because it works just fine, for me; maybe I'm used to my "always done it this way" crutch, maybe I'm just too cheap to buy a bevel -up model.
Metod,
I must defend the concept of tradition. Since the necessary 300 page essay would bore you to deeth, I will say only that a tradition provides us with two essential things:
1) Methods, processes, designs, language, models and so forth that we know work, via an evolution manifested through a lot of practical application. (That which should be conserved).
2) A basis of proven theory (the metaphysic of the tradition) that provides the basis for us to imagine, invent and devise new things. (The anarchy of mutation).
If you think that you can invent better stuff on a tabla rasa with no reference to the past and its wisdom, you have a Big Blind Spot. We stand on the shoulders of countless memes that came before us. Our very language both confines us and provides the means to devise the new.
Of course, there are those who ossify some particular moment and state of a tradition, refusing to allow it to evolve further. This is fine, if one lives in (or can construct) an unchanging or conducive environment for that which is ossified. However, apart from being a bit boring, that "unchanging" environment is probably a chimera, especially in the 21st century.
So, Ray Pine, Adam Cherubini and others who prefer, say, 18th century styles are merely preserving some aspect of a tradition of furniture making that is well-proven. In addition, if they prefer to use 18th century tools to achieve their 18th century designs, that is probably a good match. As long as they have a market (commercial or otherwise) for their products in the 21st century world, they have indeed found a stable niche.
In a world where most people are too ignorant to understand the value of tradition and who throw out the perfectly healthy baby with the redundant bathwater, it is a good thing to have wise people who keep valuable aspects of old traditions alive and well.
Personally I dislike furniture with scuttle-leg as I was frightened, when a child, by one o' them Walt Disney movies in which furniture comes alive and acts maleovlently. This is just a matter of taste. Conversely, I look at some of that over-contrived, self-consciously post-modern stuff and think, "Daft fashion, made up for the sake of a meaningless novelty and no use in the hoose".
Lataxe, a conservative anarchist
Lataxe,
<<Lataxe, a conservative anarchist>>
Now, here is a man with whom it would be a true pleasure to consume adult beverages and to conduct philosophical inquiries into the state of the (woodworking) world.Beste Wünschen auf ein glückliches und wohlbehaltenes Neues Jahr!
Tschüß!
Mit freundlichen holzbearbeitungischen Grüßen aus dem Land der Rio Grande!!
James
Metod,
Apologies for using the personal "you" when I should have used the generalised "one". My reply to you was meant as a general observation in contrast, not opposition, to yours.
In some ways, a tradition obviates rationality; but substitutes reason. A tradition may or may not analyse and explain itself (usually not, except via its practices, which include much that is non-verbal). If required to justify itself, it does so by refering to what is "reasonable". This often means "what has always been done because it works and the members of the tradition enjoy it".
Rationality is that process that eschews what has gone before and "starts from scratch" in explaining something. So often this misses the modes and advantages of a tradition, because they have not been written down, verbalised, analysed or otherwise expressed in a way amenable to rationalisation.
The result is "pure" rationalisation - mad schemes, designs and explanations that never take into account the big picture and are often based on wishful thinking (that this desirable set of things will happen but that undesirable set won't). In fact, the undesirable side-effects of the mad designs are rarely contemplated or recognised. Traditions, on the other hand, have long ago accounted for such undesirables, which is why the tradition has prospered.
Lataxe
Good question. Send me a couple of LN BU planes (and a couple BD to compare) and I will give you a definitive, thoroughly investigated and scientifically formulated opinion.
Metod,
Let me just say that just as there is "always done it this way" as an impediment to progress, there is as often "change for the sake of change" that gets passed off as "progress". If it is different, it may be an improvement; but sometimes when novelty seems like progress, it is just novel.
Regards, your contrarian,
Ray
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